The Story Behind: I Love You With My Life

The Sweet Comfort Band had added a guitarist in Randy Thomas just before recording our first project. It was 1977. We had not yet started another when Randy showed me how to play a “Seven Chord” on the piano. When I wrote this tune it was the first time I’d written a song that wasn’t straight major chords.

I brought my then girlfriend and future wife over to see our “studio”. A garage with those square carpet tiles all over the wall. It was more of a free standing tool shed with barn doors and a padlock.

I sat down to play my usual first inversion c major chords in my “hunt and peck” style, and then adding the new seven chord. Sounded nice. And I began to sing “I would like to say”. At that point, it’s all I had! We had to go. “Just before I leave you” was the afterthought.

It was several weeks before I revisited the idea. I was reading the book of John and came across “I go to prepare a place for you”, and I thought of “just before I leave you”. I decided to make the song from Jesus’ point of view, him talking to me, which was very different from the way I write, directing my feelings toward God.

I was on the road thinking about how untrusting I feel about someone saying “I love you, and I’m leaving” all at the same time. “I’ll get right back to you” is something I’d heard before that somehow rang a little hollow.

The song, like all ballads, was only tolerated in our days with the rocking Sweet Comfort Band. And this tune was placed at the end of the record. “Side Two” was still in effect in those days.

It would be a year and a half before radio found it on their own. And we were all surprised to find it at number one across the country.

I remember having to go back and listen to what I did, so we could play it live. I wasn’t crazy about the jazz bounce to what was originally a straight ballad. Now the high water mark in my writing career, it wasn’t even the acceptable song layout of verse/chorus/bridge/chorus. It was an afterthought in song to me. I had no idea of how it spoke to others! Those that need to be assured perhaps.

It was the song that put the Comfort in Sweet Comfort all these years. A promise of a life long commitment to you from Jesus.